Tue 11 Feb 1992

Disc: -ish, Def

Directory

Margaret Fleck notes that -ish can be added after a sentence, and expresses
surprise since it isn't normally an independent word. Ok, it may not be
independent in the way that, say, DOG is; but it combines quite freely with
syntactically-formed phrases, especially time-phrases:
half past seven-ish
eight o'clock-ish
nine-thirty-ish
This in itself suggests that it may be a separate word, combined with a whole
phrase - i.e. a clitic along the lines of 's, as in _the king of Spain's
daughter_.
It would be very interesting to see how any of our existing generative
grammar theories could accommodate the restriction to a phrase which defines
a time of day.
Dick Hudson
Dept of Phonetics and Linguistics,
University College London,
Gower Street,
London WC1E 6BT
(071) 387 7050 ext 3152
home: (081) 340 1253

In response to Margaret Fleck's note about Ish: it's widespread.
My students do it. But I've no idea how well established it is,
or what regions/classes/age groups it covers.
Plenty of interesting research to be done here. I'll try to
interest someone in doing a dissertation on it.

I received three possible etymologies of "def" from Linguist readers
(thanks!):
(1) The Afrikaaner Hypothesis: "deftig" means 'smart' or 'chic' in
Afrikaaner. Respondent was not sure of use in Nederlands.
(2) The Death Hypothesis: possibly an alteration of the word "death", with
final /th/ becoming /f/. The semantic connection: the phrase 'to death' is
used to mean 'extremely', as in `They discussed it to death', `I love you to
death', etc. We also say related things like 'to die for' meaning
'extremely good'.
(3) The Definite Hypothesis: possibly a back-formation of "definitely" or
"definitive", on the model of "fab" for fabulous.